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CREATE & AOM TIM Host Emergence Conference

Workshop overview

On August 26-27, 2021, CREATE and the AOM Technology and Innovation Management (TIM) division, hosted the “Emergence: Organizations, Markets, Platforms, and Regions” workshop in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Nearly 150 people from nine countries attended the hybrid workshop—57 of these attendees joined in-person while following a series of precautions thant included covid testing, mask wearing and vaccine attestations.

The Workshop explored fundamental research on the processes of emergence in order to advance our understanding of innovation and the dynamics of change. Leading interdisciplinary researchers discussed four subthemes pertaining to the intertwined levels wherein emergence occurs: organizations, markets, platforms, and regions. By advancing research and fostering a community of scholars, we hope to collectively take a step towards better understanding of technology development, innovation management, and regional dynamics. The workshop agenda included 11 sessions covering topics such as organizational emergence, platform emergence, and paper development.

The workshop was co-organized by Maryann Feldman, Heninger Distinguished Professor in Public Policy and CREATE’s Faculty Director, and Mahka Moeen, Associate Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship and Sarah Graham Kenan Scholar. The organizers would like to extend their gratitude to workshop sponsors, which include UNC College of Arts and Sciences, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, and the UNC Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research.

Workshop Keynote Highlight: Dr. Sharon Alvarez

Dr. Sharon Alvarez, Thomas W. Olofson Chair in Entrepreneurship at the University of Pittsburgh and the vice president of the Academy of Management, delivered the day one keynote of the workshop. Dr. Alvarez’s research explores the discovery and creation of new opportunities while emphasizing the imaginative creation process.

According to Dr. Alvarez, entrepreneurs have a critical role in creating new opportunities. Instead of opportunities existing as objective phenomena just waiting to be discovered and exploited, Dr. Alvarez emphasized entrepreneurial actions for opportunity discovery and creation.

Dr. Alvarez, in her influential work[i], posits that entrepreneur’s actions are the essential source of new opportunities. They act in order to explore these socially constructed opportunities and through interaction the market tests the veracity of the insight.

Not all alternatives and probabilities are known in practice–not even analyzing and estimating will always be successful. One example from Dr. Alvarez’s keynote speech is the Ice Hotel, all made of snow and ice. Its story showcases the value iterative entrepreneurial efforts, leading to outcomes hard to see at the outset. The real world is full of similar examples. The future is shaped through human actions and reactions. Humans drive change. Actions cause change. Before evaluating risks and outcomes, there is too much to learn[ii].

Complete and perfect information does not exist, the world is given to individuals for discovery and creation. Alvarez’s 2020 publication with Porac continues. In cognitive and emotional levels, individuals must first make notes about context and provide possible scenarios about their feeling and imagination.
Dr. Alvarez suggests imaginative views as the heart of creation opportunities, assuming that order and possibility are a function of what is in the entrepreneur’s mind rather than objective criteria from external sources.

The initial question that may be raised by entrepreneurship endeavors is: Why would someone make investments in early-stage endeavors? Dr. Alvarez’s paper[iii], posits stakeholders self-identify with a firm when they believe they affect, and are themselves affected by, the actions of the firm.
Through the exchange of ideas and human interactions, it is possible to obtain a common point of interest and give meaning to a situation. Common Ground is a theory centered around the shared set of knowledge and language that can lead to the emergence of a new language, entrepreneurship, and innovations.

If common ground is not established before starting a new venture, the commitment between the parties can not emerge. This idea has been explored by several entrepreneurial stakeholders and a lack of common ground has not been successful beyond the entrepreneurial effort stage.

One of the ways that common ground emerges is iterative propositions, which revolve around conversational experiments and experience, in addition to scientific experiments. The prevalence of this classification of new common grounds innovations is rising.

Entrepreneurial endeavors provide a safe place where people can have conversations to experiment and negotiate. For example, the word grocery delivery was a new language utilized by Walmart and Whole Foods, and the new intuitive language that has emerged recently using words such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp makes use of these new conversations and languages.
Alvarez presented three types of entrepreneurial endeavors:

  1. Charismatic: One member has the clarity and determination to transform ideas into potential products and services, such as Steve Jobs.
  2. Collaborative: Members have affection for each other and purpose. For instance, two friends opened their first ice cream shop in a converted gas station; Ben & Jerry’s has become a community favorite thanks to creative flavors and new language.
  3. Expert: Members have diversity in competence and experience. Roommates who needed extra cash to pay their rent offered a bed and some breakfast for few dollars during a workshop which resulted in Airbnb becoming a successful company.

Entrepreneurial endeavors are a byproduct of socially constructed meaning coupled with new languages that result in construction. Markets start out as new ideas and are introduced by human beings that care enough to create.
 
[i] Discovery and creation: Alternative theories of entrepreneurial action (Barney, 2007) | Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal;
[ii] Imagination, Indeterminacy, and Managerial Choice at the Limit of Knowledge (Porac, 2020) | Academy of Management Review;
[iii] Where do stakeholders come from? (Sachs, 2021) | Academy of Management Review.
 
Additional information about the conference, including presentations, can be found at the full conference website here


Special thanks to Carolina Barros Oliveira for her support in writing this article.

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